Everything About Tricare Young Adult

13 August 2018

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One of the trickiest parts of having young adult children is making sure that they have access to health insurance. While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandated that insurance companies extend children’s coverage to age 26, that mandate doesn’t apply to Tricare because technically Tricare isn’t insurance. And federal law prohibits kids from remaining on their parent’s Tricare once they turn 21, or 23 if they are in school full-time. As a work-around, the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) permitted the Department of Defense to create a premium-based version of Tricare to be available to kids between the time they age out of Tricare (21/23) and age 26. The product that was created is called Tricare Young Adult (TYA).

Who Can Get TYA?

Eligibility for TYA is pretty simple. The beneficiary must be:

Unmarried

Adult child of a Tricare-eligible sponsor

At least 21 (23 if full-time student) but not yet 26

Not eligible for healthcare through their own employer’s sponsored program

How Does TYA Work?

TYA works almost exactly like regular Tricare. Beneficiaries choose between Tricare Prime and Tricare Standard, and each program works just like it does if you’re not on TYA.

How Much Does TYA Cost?

For 2019, TYA costs $358 per month for Tricare Prime, or $214 per month for Tricare Select (formerly Standard.) In addition, the child will have a deductible and co-payments that correspond to their sponsor’s status (AD/retired) and which Tricare they have chosen, but those co-pays are Group B co-pays regardless of when their sponsor entered the military. TYA premiums are re-calculated every couple of years to ensure they are covering the costs of this self-funding program.

One trick to TYA is that adding TYA will move the catastrophic cap to the Group B catastrophic cap for the sponsor’s status (AD or retiree) while there is a kid using TYA. The catastrophic cap will revert to the regular level once no one is using TYA. It’s funky and makes no sense, but it is true. For 2019, the family catastrophic caps are $1028 for Active Duty families with a person on TYA, and $3,598 for retiree families with a person on TYA.

Note about Group A and Group B: Group A and Group B refer the date the sponsor entered the military. If the sponsor entered the military before 1 January 2018, you are group A except for certain exceptions such as those on TYA, who always get treated as Group B.

How To Enroll in TYA

You’ll want to do this about a month before the child loses their regular Tricare eligibility, to ensure that there is no lapse in coverage. You’ll have to pay for the first two months’ premiums when you enroll.

What Are The Other Options?

TYA isn’t the only option for children who have aged out of regular Tricare coverage. Other choices include:

Insurance through their employer

Insurance through their college or university

Covering the child under a different parent health insurance policy

Using the healthcare exchange to purchase ACA coverage

When comparing options, be sure to consider not only the monthly premium but also the deductible, costs for care, and catastrophic caps. Most families can find cheaper coverage, but it is almost never covers as much as Tricare. You have to think about how much care your child typically uses, and what kind of risk you’re willing to assume for a major illness or accident.

Tips and Tricks for TYA

While TYA is pretty straight-forward, there are a few things that it helps to know:

Technically, TYA is not supposed to talk to the parents because these kids are legally adults. Your results may vary – some parents are able to sign their kids up over the phone and in other situations, the child needed to do it themselves.

If your child obtains a job with health insurance, have them properly dis-enroll from TYA. This preserves their TYA eligibility in case they don’t remain in that job and need to go back on TYA.

Your child will need to get a new military ID just for TYA. You can’t get the new ID until the child is eligible for TYA, even if you set up the TYA earlier. And if DEERS shows that they don’t graduate from college until later, you’ll need to update that first before getting the new ID. And sometimes, DEERS and the Tricare contractor just don’t talk to each other well.

Keep all your paperwork, and open all your mail. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are more problems with TYA enrollment than non-YA enrollment. You never know when you’ll need to prove that your kid was actually enrolled, or was dis-enrolled incorrectly. It’ll be a lot easier if you know what’s going on, and have the paperwork to prove it.

TYA is a valuable benefit for kids who are aging out of Tricare but aren’t yet covered by employer health care. As with just about everything else in life, understanding the program is key to making a good choice.

Please share your experiences, nuggets of wisdom, or questions in the comments!

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Comments

One takeaway ought to be though … if you are over 18 … in all but two states you are an adult.

Throughout your piece you paint a picture of parents needing to make the insurance decision for their adult child. Best thing for those ‘kids’ as you call them is for them to make their own decision. TYA is one of the options and as you illustrate a very good one … but it needs to be their choice.

I agree with you that the $3,500 cap increase does not make sense. TYA has a separate premium and ought to be treated as a separate policy with eligibility expiring at age 26.

Treating 21 or 23 yo as kids and making their decisions for them … as you wrote here is a mistake —

“You can enroll in TYA over the phone, by fax, by mail, or via MilConnect.com.

You’ll want to do this about a month before the child loses their regular Tricare eligibility, to ensure that there is no lapse in coverage. You’ll have to pay for the first two months’ premiums when you enroll.”

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